AltWeeklies Wire » Books » Fiction

Get 'Em While They're Young

By J. Caleb Mozzocco
Columbus Alive | September 14, 2005
If kids book Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! weren’t published by World Ahead Publishing, whose catalog includes Thank You, President Bush and Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine, I’d almost think it was some sort of liberal joke making fun of conservatives for being such sore winners.

After all, Republicans currently control all three branches of the federal government—to complain about liberals impacting America at all these days, let along ruining it, takes a pretty creative thinking.

Author Katharine DeBrecht rises to the challenge with this picture book, illustrated in (bad) editorial page political cartoon style by Jim Hummel.

Their characters are two good little boys who live in a house with a portrait of Reagan on the wall. They want a new swing set, but their parents tell them its better to earn a swing set than have it given to you, so they decide to sell lemonade.

At night, they share a dream of being harassed by the denizens of “Liberaland.” A Ted Kennedy look-a-like takes half their lemonade money in taxes, with the words “Why work hard when the government can provide for you?”

The parody stops making sense after that bit about taxes, when someone from the “LCLU” makes the boys take down the picture of Jesus they have on their stand fand Hilary Clinton shows up with a handful of broccoli. And it’s never terribly subtle—one liberal, for example, has a sticker saying “I (heart) activist judges” on his briefcase. We’re not exactly talking The Lorax or The Giving Tree here.
Tags: The Lorax, Hilary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!, Katharine DeBrecht

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